Sunday, October 26, 2014

“Make
sure you never discuss what I tell you, ever.” – “Maurice Bishop”

Antonio Veciana and Jerry Policoff (Kelly Pix)

Antonio
Veciana came into the picture in 1976 – that seminal Bi-Centennial summer when
he was interviewed for the first time by Congressional investigator Gaeton
Fonzi.

The
Church Committee, named after its chairman Sen. Frank Church (D. Idaho), was
established by Congress to investigate the intelligence community in the wake
of Watergate and an explosive Seymore Hersh article in the New York Times (Dec.
1976), and included a bi-partisan JFK Assassination subcommittee of two
Senators – Gary Hart (D. Col.) and
Richard Schwiker (R. Pa.), who were not to investigate the assassination itself,
they were only charged with investigating the role and response of the
intelligence community to the assassination.

Schweiker,
a liberal Republican from Pennsylvania, hired Gaeton Fonzi as an investigator
based primarily on his reputation as a journalist whose Philadelphia Magazine
investigative articles were guided by its editor Alan Halpern.

As an
Italian from Philadelphia, Fonzi earned the respect and loyalty of people who
confided in him, and often had to remain anonymous, a trait shared by other
reporters on this story – Dick Russell and Anthony Summers.

Veciana
first came to the public’s attention in a Saturday Evening Post article –
“Dallas – The Cuban Connections,” which mentioned Veciana and his Alpha 66
terrorist militia that attacked Cuban and Russian ships and was hell bent on
killing Castro. [See: Sat Evening Post]

When
Dick Russell went looking for Veciana in Miami he found Fonzi had already
interviewed him, as he was listed in the phone directory and met him at a
little café.

Veciana
told Russell, as he had told Fonzi, that many of his anti-Castro activities
were directed by his intelligence case officer known to him as “Maurice
Bishop,” a shadowy spymaster who also “ran” Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused
assassin of President Kennedy.

As
Veciana summarized the significance of that personal information he put it
bluntly – “that means – coup d’etat.”

When
Veciana recognized the accused assassin as the same man he had met a few months
earlier, he expected to be arrested, he waited for them to come to his front
door but they never came, at least not until Senate investigator Gaeton Fonzi
tracked him down and asked about his covert Cuban operations.

The
devil is in the details, and Veciana gave Fonzi and the sub-committee staff all
the details they wanted, and a sketch artist did a facial profile of Veciana’s
description of “Maurice Bishop,” which produced a profile that Sen. Schweiker
recognized as someone who had testified before his committee – former CIA
officer David Atlee Phillips. The background of “Maurice Bishop,” as detailed
by Veciana, matched perfectly to that of the career of Phillips and based on
his own autobiography – “Nightwatch – 20 Years of Peculiar Service.”

Veciana
however, refused to identify Phillips as “Bishop,” even after confronting
Phillips as a meeting of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers
(AFIO), where the keynote speaker was Clare Booth Luce.

Despite
Veciana’s refusal to positively ID Phillips, Fonzi, Bob Tannenbaum of the HSCA
and others believed Phillips was “Bishop” and Veciana refused to identify him
to protect his family, - he had survived an assassination attempt, was shot in
the head, framed for drugs and had participated in assassination plots with
“Bishop” before, so fear of him and the security of his family were factors.
Veciana also had a loyality to “Bishop” for years of service, and paying him
royally – not only getting him well paying jobs, but cashing him out after a
decade of service with a large payment – over $200,000 in cash. Veciana also wanted
to revive his anti-Castro Cuban activities and thought that “Bishop” would back
him again.

When the
House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) was formed and Fonzi was hired
by its first chief counsel Richard Sprague, Veciana was reluctantly convinced
to testify before the whole committee in a public session with the media
present, as was Sylvia Odio, who also had to be persuaded to be questioned by
Congressmen in a public session. But then, at the last minute, both Veciana and
Odio were scratched from the list of those to be called to testify, and they
felt betrayed and abandoned. “They don’t want to know the truth,” Odio said
when told she wouldn’t be permitted to testify in public.

Then,
decades later, after Phillips and Fonzi had died, Fonzi’s widow Maria persuaded
Veciana to come clean and issue a public statement that David Atlee Phillips
was indeed “Maurice Bishop” – the mysterious spymaster who directed Lee Harvey
Oswald, the accused assassin of the president, and he agreed. “Gate didn’t push
too far,” Marie said, “I’m a bit more pushier than Gaeton.”

So it
was with some anticipation that Antonio Veciana was to speak publically at the
AARC Conference and decades after being denied the opportunity to testify
before Congress, he would tell his story and take questions from ordinary
citizens.

Although
he understands and speaks English, he prefers to talk in his native Spanish and
did so with the able translator Fernando Amati.

“I want
to state unequalvocally that David Atlee Phillips is Maurice Bishop, who met
Lee Harvey Oswald.”

Veciana
was working as a banking accountant in Havana in 1960 when he met and went to
lunch with “Maurice Bishop,” an American who used a Belgian passport and
claimed to work for a Belgian company. At the Floridita, a restaurant also
frequented by Ernest Hemingway, “Mr. Bishop” recruited Veciana to work with him
against Castro.

While he
wouldn’t acknowledge being with the CIA, “Bishop” told Veciana “I will help you
fight Castro,” and did so in a hundred meetings over the course of a decade.

“Bishop”
took Veciana to an office in the Pan Am Bank building in Miami, where Veciana
signed a security agreement and began lessons in tradecraft, psychological
warfare and propaganda.

“I was
trained by the CIA, as was Oswald. Over the years of training I became a
professional conspirator.”

“Oswald and Fidel Castro were ideal scapegoats
for the murder of the president. Bishop told Oswald to travel to Mexico City.
…Phillips knew of the difficulty of getting a visa for Cuba from the Cuban
Embassy in Mexico City. That resulted in the Mexico City incident. Oswald was
directed.” There was no official meeting to plan the assassination. Groups of
officers got together to plan the murder because they thought he was a threat
to the national security of the United States. The U.S. military accepted this
and incorporated certain elements (of the assassination plan). It really was a
coup d’etat.”

Malcolm
Blunt wanted to know about Veciana’s work for U.S. military intelligence, and
made note of the fact that Veciana’s CIA file describes him as being “straight,
honest and truthful.”

Antonio
Veciana’s confirmation that David Atlee Phillips was indeed the mysterious
spymaster “Maurice Bishop” who met with Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas in the
summer of 1963 begs other questions, such as how they met and whether Phillips
served as Oswald’s case officer and directed many of his activities in much the
same way he directed Veciana’s anti-Castro efforts.

And if
so, what are the consequences of that being true?

Did they
know each other? For starters, consider the fact that both Phillips and Oswald
lived for a time in Fort Worth, Texas, where Phillips was born and raised and
where he lived until he went to college, and where Oswald lived with his mother
and brothers through grammar school.

Beginning
in 1945 the Oswald’s lived in Fort Worth, first on Granvury Road in Benbrook,
where LHO attended Benbrook Elementry school. They then moved to Willing
Street, San Saba Street in Benbrook and lastly on Ewing Street. In 1948 LHO’s
half-brother John Pic entered the USMC Reserves and in 1950 enlisted in the
Coast Guard. In 1952 Oswald’s brother Robert joined the USMC and afterwards,
Oswald and his mother moved to New York City where they lived with the Pic
family.

David
Atlee Phillips attended college but didn’t graduate, and moved to Chile with
his first wife, Helen Hausman Haasch, where he purchased the South Pacific Mail
newspaper and in 1950, began working as a contract agent for the CIA. He became
a full time agent in 1955.

Veciana
says that he met Phillips in the lobby of the Southland Center in Dallas in the
summer of 1963. He arrived for a meeting with Phillips fifteen minutes early
and found Phillips talking with a young man he later identified as Oswald.
Phillips and Oswald talked privately for awhile, and then they walked to a
nearby coffee shop and Oswald departed, agreeing to meet again with Phillips
later on.

Veciana
attributed the slip up – of his seeing Phillips with Oswald was due to his
being early, as well as sloppy tradecraft on the part of Phillips. “He made
mistakes,” Veciana says.

At the
time Oswald was living and working in New Orleans, but he his whereabouts are
not always accounted for and he was known to travel widely, even though he
didn’t drive or own a car, and primarily used public transportation.

Phillips
was then responsible for the CIA’s Cuban operations being run out of Mexico
City, and monitored the Cuban and Soviet embassies there, both places Oswald
visited shortly after meeting with Phillips in Dallas.

While
the other reporters on this story – Fonzi, Russell and Summers all developed
new and important leads, I tried to take this line of inquiry a little further
by focusing on and more closely examining the scene of this reported meeting –
the lobby of the Southland Center in Dallas.

An
outstanding location anchored by the Sheraton Hotel and insurance and bank
company offices, Oswald had previously visited there when he applied for a job
with Sam Ballen, a friend and associate of their mutual friend George
deMohrenschildt. [See: Samuel B. Ballen WC testimony:

A review
of Southland tenants in 1963 show that it was also the location of the law
offices of Wynne, Jaffe and Tinsley, Wynne being Bedford Shelmire Wynne, whose
brother Angus Wynne, Sr. (Wynne, McKenzie/McKennsie and Baer (Henry Baer) is
closely affiliated with the Baylor Medical Center and original minority owner
of the Dallas Cowboys (NFL) football team with Clint Murchison.

In the
immediate aftermath of the assassination and murder of Oswald, the Secret
Service put Marina Oswald and her daughters up at the Inn of the Six Flags
(Great Southwest Corp. owned by Muchison) whose manager James Martin became
Marina’s business manager. That arrangement lasted until January 1964 when
Martin was fired and Wynne, McKennsie and Baer attorney William “Bill Mac”
McKenzie was hired as attorney for both Marina and Oswald’s brother Robert. McKenzie
represented both of the Oswalds before the Warren Commission.

Did
David Atlee Phillips have other business in the Southland Center when he met
Oswald and Veciana in the lobby?

Besides
Oswald’s previous visit there to apply for a job with deMorhrenschildt’s friend
Sam Ballen, and being the location of the law offices of the Oswald’s attorney,
the Southland Center also had a private club – the Chaparral Club, a private 36th
floor establishment where big businessmen met and mingled, and could have been
a place where Phillips could have been prior to meeting with Veciana and Oswald
in the lobby.

The
coffee shop where Phillps and Veciana had their meeting may be the same coffee
shop that Jack Ruby and Larry Crafard visited at three o’clock on the morning
after the assassination, a hotel coffee shop where Ruby knew the owner. Were they meeting at the same hotel coffee
shop?

Did
Oswald and Phillips see eye to eye?

Consider
the fact that they may have been from the same Fort Worth neighborhood, and
that Oswald, as young as he was – fulfilled many of the peculiar traits
Phillips listed in his book “Occupations in Intelligence” as qualities of a
good agent – well traveled, ability to get around, multi-lingual, unobtrusive,
well read, knowledge of foreign lands, education - ? Hell no, Phillips said,
you don’t need a degree, as he – David Atlee Phillips never actually graduated
from college, yet he rose to the rank of CIA Chief of the Western Hemisphere
Division – the third ranking officer in the agency.

Oswald
certainly fits the mold of the Covert Operative Personality Profile, and he
certainly went into operational mode in the immediate aftermath of the
assassination, but what does it mean if many of his activities were directed by
the CIA’s David Atlee Phillips?

If
Oswald was set up as the Patsy, does that mean that David Atlee Phillips and
the CIA were also set up to be exposed as the false sponsors of the
assassination?

Shortly
before he died of cancer David Atlee Phillips, in a phone conversation, denied
to me that he knew Oswald or was “Maurice Bishop,” and I now believe that he
lied to me, he lied to me to protect himself and his family and his friends and
associates, just as Veciana lied to protect his interests, and now wants to
come clean to bare his soul and seek some sort of redemption.

David
Atlee Phillips, in his unpublished The AMLASH Legacy manuscript wrote: “I was
one of the two case officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald. After working to
establish his Marxist bona fides, we gave him the mission of killing Fidel
Castro in Cuba.
I helped him when he came to Mexico
City to obtain a visa, and when he returned to Dallas to wait for it I
saw him twice there. We rehearsed the plan many times: In Havana Oswald was to
assassinate Castro with a sniper's rifle from the upper floor window of a
building on the route where Castro often drove in an open jeep. Whether Oswald
was a double-agent or a psycho I'm not sure, and I don't know why he killed
Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against
Castro. Thus the CIA did not
anticipate the President's assassination but it was responsible for it. I share
that guilt.”

I never
really wanted to see justice done, or do to them what they did to JFK - I just
wanted to figure it out and learn how and why they did it.

I
thought it would be terrific if I could only figure it all out, and then track
down the mastermind of Dealey Plaza and sit down next to him at the bar and
share a drink and ask him why he did it.

Although
talking with David Atlee Phillips on the phone was the closest I got to him, a
Washington investigator I knew Kevin Walsh did get the opportunity to have a
few drinks with him and pry some tidbits out of him.

In July 1986 Phillips told Walsh, "My
private opinion is that JFK was done in by a conspiracy, likely including American
intelligence officers."

Where to begin? As David Kaiser quotes the King in Alice
in Wonderland – “Begin at the beginning and go on ‘till you come to the end,
then stop.”

Good advice well taken, but there’s before the
beginning – what Shakespeare called the Prologue – as inscribed on the
granite statute in front of the old National Archives building in Washington
D.C. - "What Is Past Is Prologue," and the title of their magazine – Prologue, which has published some
important articles on the assassination.

The original Prologue from McBeth is a prologue to a
murder, but it doesn’t just mean that you need to understand the past to
understand the present – the prologue provides the deep background, the social
situation, the meaning behind the crime, so you know what inspires the murder
and why things happens.

John F. Kennedy was either the victim of a deranged
lone nut without clear motive or the President was killed by his enemies, a
pre-planned and well executed plot, a conspiracy and a coup d’etat.

But it must be one or the other and can’t be both.

Although no one has ever been brought to justice for
the murder or any of the crimes related to it; what is wrong and can be legally
demonstrated to be false is the Warren Report’s official proclamation that the
President was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald alone, with no clear motive and
Oswald was in turn killed by Jack Ruby alone and unaided.

Since the September 1964 release of that report
there have been many sensational revelations that not only call into question
this basic conclusion of the Warren Report but a new model of the assassination
is emerging; one that takes all of the facts into consideration and makes some
sense of it all.

As G. Kinston Clark said in The Critical Historian - book that got me hooked on history: the distortion produced by bias
is potentially present in any attempt to write history. Sometimes the danger is
obvious and menacing, sometimes it is covert coming from unexpected angles and
in not easily detected forms….Any interpretation which makes use of facts which
can be shown to be false or accepts as certainty true facts which are dubious or
does not take into account facts which are known, are at best, potentially
misleading and possibly grossly and dangerously deceptive….It is the first task
of the historian to review any narrative to find what links are missing
altogether…where what is defective cannot be supplied by further research, it
is an historian’s duty to draw attention to the fact so that men can know where
they stand.…Any historical conception which has not been adjusted to the most
recent results will cease to be satisfactory.”

What do
we now know to be false that we thought was true and what do we know now that
we didn’t used to know in regards to the assassination of President John F.
Kennedy? That is the question posted.

To set the prologue and deep background let me
explain that Jim Lesar, Esq., the president and director of the Assassinations
Archives and Research Center (AARC) decided to host this conference on the 50th
Anniversary of the Warren Report not only to call attention to what significant
disclosures have been made since the report was released but also show how
records are still wrongfully being withheld today and why it’s still important
to do something about it now. [ASSASSINATION ARCHIVES – AND RESEARCH CENTER]

As far as the public’s confidence in their
government; it is generally acknowledged that the late September 1964
publication of the Warren Report sparked the first negative spike in the
statistical graph and the steady and continuing decline in the public
confidence in government has not yet abated and will not until all of the
assassination records are released to the public. [Confidence in Government | JFKCountercoup]

Lesars’ call for this conference led to the hiring
of AARC Executive Director Jerry Policoff
who pretty much put this conference together himself, keeping it academic,
serious and meaningful. He now knows what John Judge of COPA and Debra Conway
and Larry Hancock at Lancer had to do to make their many annual Dallas
conferences successful.

Knowing Jerry from his early articles on the assassination
in the late 70s and his original participation with COPA, he knows me too, so
when I was offered the opportunity to make a presentation at the conference I
considered bringing the ONI files to the forefront, since nobody else was
talking about them, though eventually they were mentioned on the final day by
Joe Backes. [JFKcountercoup: The Railroading of LCDR Terri Pike / OSWALD’S ONI RECORDS REVISITED | COPA]

There have been many JFK Assassination Conferences
over the years, but only a few stand out – the NYU Law School conference in NYC
the late 1970s, Dallas ASK, Chicago 4th Decade, 1992 and 1993 DC
COPAs, the 2008 and 2013 Wecht Institute symposiums, but this 2014 AARC
conference marks the ending of an era.

There was another conference going on in DC the same
weekend and I will get around to that later, [The Warren Report 50 Years Later: A Critical Examination] and
another one is being planned for Dallas in November [JFK Lancer], but here I will focus on just the Sept. 2014 AARC Conference in Bethesda
and why what happened there is important.

As a speaker I wouldn’t be paid but they would
arrange for my transportation, room and banquet dinner, so I was in, and
planned on driving down but then, thanks to GPS
hooked up with independent researcher William Paris who met me early
Thursday afternoon at a Dunkin’ Donuts just off of the highway. I had the
pleasure of driving to DC with William in his Sube wagon full of band
equipment, as he plays guitar in a popular Jersey Shore rock band (Billy Walton Band // HOME). His plan was to stay with his folks who lived nearby and attend the
conference Friday and early Saturday with his father before leaving to catch a
gig at the Jersey Shore on Saturday night. I would have to leave early with him
or find my own way home, which turned into quite an adventure.

On the ride down I had a flashback on the trip I
took to DC for the first COPA meeting with Bob Danello, a police lieutenant who
was one of the early supporters of COPA who had a keen interest in Cuba.

One of the pertinent things Will Paris mentioned was
the fact the apparent Lone-Nut fall-back position seems to be taking shape and
they are now saying that - okay, Oswald did it alone, but he wasn’t just a
deranged loner, he was a deranged loner with secret intelligence connections –
Cuban Communists connections, the original cover-story, and this had to be
hidden at the time or it would have started World War III.

The thing about this scenario is it assumes the fact
that the assassination operation was meant to be discovered as a Cuban
Communist Conspiracy and the cover-up rejected that notion using the excuse
that it would lead to war, just as 9/11 led directly to wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq. So instead of going to war or even finding out who was really behind the
assassination, the deranged lone nut cover up was devised and accepted and
saved the world from nuclear annialation. Or so the story seems to go – or is
apparently going. Well we’ll just have to wait and see.

When I checked into the first class Bethesda Hyatt
Regency hotel I was at first mistaken for another guest – another William Kelly
but Jerry Polifoff, who was located by cell phone at a deli-liquor store fifty
miles away, quickly straightened it out – I was registered under the name Bill
Kelly. So I had a namesake registered at the same hotel that weekend – harking
to my recent blog post on Double-Identities in JFK assassination research. [JFKcountercoup: Double Identities in Historical Research and the HSCA Records of Richard A. Sprague, Esq.].

After checking out the price of a beer at the hotel
bar, I wandered around the corner to find the small and quaint Tommy Joe’s, a
typical collegiate bar in a new and bustling neighborhood of bars, restaurants,
shops and cafes.

“Hey Bill!” came a call from across the street.

Who could possibly know me here? I looked over and
it was Zack, an Ohio school teacher in for the conference who I had met at the
Wecht conference in Pittsburgh the previous October. Zack is the kind of young
historic researchers who will have to step up and take over as the next
generation of researchers, and he seems up to the challenge.

Zach

Back to the hotel for a 6:30 pm Meet and Greet,
conference registration and casual cocktail party in the Presidential Suite on
the 11th floor, I got on the elevator with a half dozen others who I
didn’t recognize but looking around I had an eerie feeling and flashed to the
elevator scene in Robert Redford’s “Three Days of the Condor,” where the Condor
gets on an elevator with the Jackal assassin and a couple of silly giggling
college kids.

While it was a silent ride, once off the elevator we
introduced ourselves and it turned out the other passengers on the elevator
ride were Marie Fonzi, widow of journalist and former Congressional investigator
Gateton Fonzi, HSCA investigator Dan Hardway, former anti-Castro Cuban
terrorist Antonio Veciana and Ernest Trivitts – a Russian professor, former
close friend of the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and suspected KGB
operative.

What a crew, I thought, my instincts proved correct.

I introduced
myself to Marie Fonzi, told her Gaeton was a hero of mine, and so was she for
carrying on his work, especially in this area.

Just off the elevator I met Buell Wesley Fraser, who
gave Oswald a ride to work on the morning of the assassination, and Fraser’s
wife Betty, a charming Texas couple with an interesting story to tell that
doesn’t jive with the official version of events.

Then Anthony Summers was suddenly there too, just
off a plane from Ireland.

Standing off in a corner former HSCA investigator
Dan Hardway introduced himself to Veciana, noting that while it was the first
time they met, he knew quite a lot about Senior Veciana from having worked
closely with Gaeton Fonzi and Ed Lopez, both of whom did know Veciana
personally. While Veciana can understand and speak English, he is more
comfortable and prefers Spanish and had with him his son, a high school history
teacher, and a translator, the very capable Fernanado Amati.

Lopez, short with crew cut hair, still has a boyish
look about him, one that belied the CIA when he and Hardway finally got their
security background clearance and for nine months and were given access to any
CIA document they requested before being cut off. Some of the documents they read
had to do with Veciana, and now, here they were standing together and shaking
hands for the first time.

I took a photo of Lopez and Veciana together, and
then saw a somewhat frenzied Jim Lesar trying to recruit a few extra hands to
go downstairs to the front door and help unload Jerry Policoff’s car of the
refreshments. Zach and I volunteered, and when Policoff showed up I grabbed a
few cases of beer and some wine and hand delivered it to the thirsty in
Presidential Suite.

Unpacking the refreshments I met Alan Dale and was
later impressed with his knowledge of the case as well as his ease in front of
the microphone. Since he is a DC band leader and used to talking to rooms full
of people he did a fine job as Master of Ceremonies, a role that he will also
play for a mini-JFK Lancer conference in Dallas in November.

I also went out of my way to sit down and talk to
Buell Wesley Fraser and his wife Betty. Fraser was an Irving neighbor of Ruth
Paine who worked at the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) with Oswald and
gave him a ride to work on the morning of the assassination. Fraser was at
first considered a suspect in a conspiracy and was violently interrogated by
the Dallas police but refused to change his story, always denied that the
package Oswald took to work that morning was long enough to be a rifle, and
said that Oswald never gave any indication of having the intention of killing
the president that day. Oswald, according to Fraser, was also a loving father
who enjoyed playing with his children and the other children in the neighborhood
liked Oswald, a point Frazer thought important in judging Oswald’s character.

Also at the Presidential Suite, Ernest Tibbits had a
similar view of Oswald and characterized him as a warm, kind and gentle human
being with a sense of humor, and not the usual deranged sociopath portrayed by
those who claim he killed the President and a cop.

Everyone has their own perspective, not only of
Oswald, but what they perceive to have happened at Dealey Plaza that day, and
what would happen at the conference that weekend.

“We had not been told the truth about Oswald” –
Warren Commissioner Richard Russell

This Photo loomed large over the conference screens when they weren't being used, which sparked some interest in trying to identify those in the picture. From left to right - John J. McCloy, David Belin (aka Alfred E. Newman), Richard Russell, Gerald Ford, Earl Warren, LBJ, Allen Dulles, John Sherman Cooper and Hale Boggs. INTO THE RABBIT'S HOLE

As many people have compared trying to figure out
the assassination of President Kennedy to falling into Alice’s Rabbit’s Hole,
or going through the Looking Glass -

I thought it noteworthy that it was an annotated edition of Alice In
Wonderland that gave me the idea of editing an Annotated Warren Report,
detailing exactly what they got wrong, sentence by sentence, what we now know that they didn’t know
then, which is one of the projects I am working on. [The Warren Report: Table of Contents].

Jim Lesar, the president and director of the
Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) began the proceedings in his
welcoming remarks, saying that the AARC was established in the Orwellian year
of 1984 by his friend and fellow attorney Bud Fensterwald. As a long time
Senate Committee counsel and attorney for a number of interesting characters –
such as Watergate burglar James McCord, Fensterwald was also a part of the
Committee to Investigate Assassinations (CIA), which played a major role in
getting Congress to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy.

I came along in the late 1970s, shortly after the
HSCA folded shop and its records sealed for fifty years, and with my college
mate John Judge, formed the non-profit Committee for an Open Archives,” for the
purpose of lobbying Congress to release the HSCA records to the public.
Whenever I was in Washington I’d visit Jim Lesar, especially after a Dallas
conference or while doing some research at the old Archives, I found many
important records among the stacks at the AARC. If doing some special research
with Anthony Summers or other writer on special assignment, Lesar would give us
a key and we would work through the night.

The old AARC building, on 14th Street,
was a classic, with an elevator operator and an ancient elevator that they said
Lincoln once used. After the AARC archive was put in storage, where it was only
accessed by Lesar and his board, until now, as Jerry Policoff is overseeing the
inventory of what’s there and preparing to make it all available to researchers
once again.

The AARC isn’t just about JFK, but focuses on
assassination when it is used as a political tactic, a neglected area of study,
one that must continue into the future and beyond the lives of those currently
running the show. And Lesar knows that, but besides opening up the AARC
archives and hosting this conference, he is going back to FOIA court with some
very high profile clients, who I was due to meet. Lesar is still playing
hardball but most of all he wants you to know why.

“We need to understand the past to understand
current events,” Lesar said in trying to explain why this conference matters,
and a recurring theme of the conference is the fact that we really can’t make a
determination as to what happened to President Kennedy until all of the cards
are on the table and all of the government records are released.

Lesar pointed out that this conference couldn’t have
happened without the support of AARC board members and supporters, especially
that of Abby Rockefeller, who was moved by James Douglas’ book – “Who Killed
JFK and Why It Matters,” and that while Douglas had been invited to join the
program, he had other pressing concerns and couldn’t make it.

Conference Host Jim Lesar - of the Assassinations Archives and Research Center (ARRC)

Why does it matter and why does this conference matter?
Lesar’s answers were – it matters
because the Warren Report marked the profound slide in public distrust in the
government and the press; it matters because in 1992 Congress passed a law
requiring the records be released and they are still being withheld; it matters
because the JFK assassination and those of MLK and RFK wiped out a generation
of liberal left political leadership, which had a devastating political impact
that continues to erode democratic government today. It matters because the result
has been to encourage the rampant growth of a national security state in ways
that have had profound adverse effects on our world standing, our economic
vitality and our personal liberties.

Most of the tens of thousands of JFK assassination
records still being withheld today are sealed for reasons of “national
security.”

At some point Jim Garrison was quoted as saying,
“The people of this country don’t have to be protected from the truth. The
Truth about the assassination of the president has been concealed long enough,”
though Garrison went to his grave not knowing the full truth in his lifetime.
And so did Harold Weisberg, Penn Jones, Mary Ferrell, John Judge and now Ed
Sherry.

But Lesar is still alive, and so is Cyril Wecht,
Paul Hoch, Peter Dale Scott, Bill Turner, Richard Schweiker, Vince Salandria
and others who have strived to learn the complete truth about what really
happened at Dealey Plaza, and deserve to see all of the remaining sealed files
in their lifetime.

As Lesar put it, “Political assassinations and the
JFK-MLK-RFK trifecta of assassinations will continue to affect us immensely
until we come to grips with it and deal with it effectively.”

Lesar pointed out that the JFK Act of 1992 was
unanimously passed by Congress because of the largest public outcry to date,
probably ever, it was an outrage for people to learn from Oliver Stone’s movie
JFK and while many millions of records have been released as a result, there
are still secret government records on the assassination that have yet to be
released and are kept from the American people today, so many so they can’t
tell us how many.

The fact that the government is still keeping
assassination records secret after Congress ordered them released decades ago
makes this a relevant issue today.

Thomas Jefferson was quoted: “The people must arm
themselves with the power of knowledge and truth,” and a democracy depends on
an educated electorate, not one that is kept ignorant by the false cloak of
national security.

According Lesar, “The National Archives’ role is
particularly disturbing. The Archives isn’t supposed to be a burial ground for
records.”

One of the clichés used was “History Exhumed,” and
like Pat Speer (Ed Forum), I wondered why this conference was being held in
Bethesda, Maryland and no one bothered to visit the nearby Bethesda Naval
Medical Center, where JFK’s botched autopsy was performed, or Walter Reed,,
which is mentioned prominently on the Air Force One radio tapes, or the
residential Bethesda homes of such prominent suspects as David Atlee Phillips
and Col. Jose Rivera.

Or why no one was calling for a new autopsy of the
President today?

Andrew Kreig of the AARC did his talk on – “Current
Implications of the JFK Assassination Cover-Up.”

Alan Dale spoke eloquently on “What we now know that
the Warren Commission Didn’t Know.”

Prof. G. Robert Blakey was to sit with his former
law students and HSCA investigators Dan Hardway and Ed Lopez and have a
discussion on the “Culture of Secrecy and Democratic Accountability,” but
Blakey was delayed so his talk was pushed back to Saturday and Hardway and
Lopez carried the day on their subject of “The HSCA and the CIA – the View from
the Trenches and the View from the Top,” which I will be writing a separate
sidebar on.

At the Hotel’s Daily Grill bar Will Paris and I sat
down next to Paul Kunsler, who practically singlehandedly picketed the NARA to
protest their policies regarding the JFK Act. Paul will be giving a lecture on
the assassination at the Georgetown University Library, where HSCA investigator
Bob Tannenbaum claims to have seen a film of an anti-Castro Cuban training camp
that includes Oswald and David Atlee Phillips among the Cubans. It is also
where the papers of Edward J. Epstein are supposed to be but when Malcolm Blunt
got there, found the box he was looking for empty.

FRIDAY – Afternoon

Dr. John
Newman (“Oswald and the CIA” and “JFK and Vietnam”) did his talk on “The
Darkest Cover-up: The CIA and Cuba,” in which he described how the
existing CIA records that have been released so far indicate that not only was
there a keen operational interest in Oswald months before the assassination,
but there was also a deception operation going on, and that there appears to
have been two separate operations going on at the same time – one with-in the
other.

Newman
explained that before you can even begin to understand the details behind what
happened at Dealey Plaza you have to connect it to other, more well known and
exposed operations in Cuba and elsewhere (Mexico, Vietnam, Haiti), and you have
to decode the crypts that are used in CIA memos and cables that attempt to
conceal the identities and locations of those involved.

The
crypto codes can be broken using the same basic research methodology used to
uncover David Atlee Phillips (DAP) as the mysterious “Maurice Bishop,” –
chronicling the known background, places of residence, where they are stationed
and movements of subjects to fit a common pattern. In some cases just sloppy
tradecraft and simple mistakes make it possible to determine the real
identities of who the crypts refer to.

While
other researchers disagreed on some of the identities that Newman said he has
uncovered, if there is a stronger case for someone else other than the person
Newman refers to, then let’s have it so we can at least all agree on who these
people are.

Jefferson
Morley (“Our Man in Mexico”) did his presentation on “The CIA and the Culture
of Secrecy” by recounting how he obtained a phone number for former CIA officer
Jane Roman and got her to agree to be interviewed. With John Newman, they
visited Roman and showed her some recently released CIA cables, one of which
she signed off on, knowing that it was incorrect and got her to admit it.

Morley
also stressed the need to take new approaches to the subject – “We need a new
narrative that resonates with those not alive in 1963 – the president of the
United States is murdered in broad daylight and nobody is brought to justice.”

Morley
said there was a culture in the mainstream media newsroom that uses different
criteria in determining what is newsworthy. “Most stories,” Morley said, “need
the preponderance of evidence to support it, but with JFK the bar is raised to
beyond a reasonable doubt.” Jeff also
explained how having the JFK records on the internet will change the way such
historical research is done – and his view of the assassination 1.0 – Warren
Report – 2.0 – JFK the movie and the JFK Act – 3.0 – where we are now – takes
things to a new level.

Anthony
Summers (“Not in Your Lifetime”) sobered
everyone up with his interesting talk entitled “After Not in Your Lifetime,”
during which he recounted how he was drawn to the case of the murdered American
president and was shocked to discover that the details had not yet been
subjected to standard journalist purview, with only few notable exceptions.

Applying
such objective reporting techniques to the questions being posed, Summers said
that there still remain unanswered questions, but that he tried, over the
course of many years, to answer them, and in some cases did. He was convinced
that David Atlee Phillips was “Maurice Bishop,” and recounted how he identified
some new witnesses to Phillips-Bishop. Although he has been working on other
subjects – 9/11 and x, he maintains a keen interest in the JFK assassination
and will continue to follow up any new leads as they present themselves – as
even after the third edition of his book was published, he joined former HSCA
Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey to interview a key anti-Castro Cuban who
identified another Cuban as one who confessed to being involved in the Dealey
Plaza operation and assisting in the assassination of President Kennedy.
(The Cuban assassin with a deadly secret: 'I shot JFK’ - Telegraph / Video: JFK anniversary: second gunman named - Telegraph )

Prof.
Ernst Titovets, (“Oswald: Russian Episode”), who comes across convincingly
and with style, expounded on his experiences with Oswald in Russia, “Oswald Was
my Best Friend,” and like Frazer, concluded that Oswald was not a
sociopathological killer, but a deeply philosophical human being with a big
heart and decisive mind.

As a
first day witness Wesley Fraser’s story is important, and I think it
significant that in his Sixth Floor Oral History Fraser says that he last saw
Oswald walking down Houston Street, having apparently left the TSBD from the
rear door, and not the front door as the Warren Report attests.

While I
would have preferred to have the Hollywood biographer and a professional
journalist Joe McBride talk about the Tippit murder, which he wrote a book
about (“Into the Nightmare”), Dr. Donald Thomas, includes a chapter in his book
(“Hear No Evil”) on the Tippit murder so he did two presentations, one on the
acoustical analysis of the DPD recording and the other on the Tippit murder.
His presentation was called “The Tippit Murder: Rosetta Stone to the Warren
Commission Cover-Up” because Warren Commission attorney David Belin called the
Tippit murder the Rosetta Stone of the assassination because he believed it to
be the clincher – Oswald killed JFK and then killed a cop in the getaway. But
Thomas flips that coin over and shows how the Tippit murder evidence and
witness testimony doesn’t hold up any more than the Dealey Plaza evidence and
witness testimony.

I talked
privately with Dr. Thomas after his presentation and mentioned the fact that
the reports of Carl Mather’s car – a 57’ Plymouth at the scene of his good
friend’s murder, being driven around by someone resembling Oswald, while Mather
was at work at Collins Radio, is certainly intriguing evidence that must be
further investigated. Thomas, as do others, make the mistake of looking first
at the FBI report that mentions a red Ford, when in fact, the mechanic who gave
the original information said at first it was a Plymouth, and wrote the Texas
license plate number down, and traced to Mather, and it was unlikely that the
mechanic would not know the difference between a Ford and a Plymouth. The red
Ford is clearly a red hearing that first appears in the FBI report and is
intentionally wrong in order to deflect attention from Mather, who the FBI
refused to interview.

I’ve
also heard reports from Dallas that when J.D. Tippit’s widow Marie recently
made an appearance at the Sixth Floor Museum, Joe McBride wanted was going to
ask her about Carl Mather and the recent allegation that Mather met Tippit on
the morning before his murder, but he was prevented from doing so by Gary Mack,
the Sixth Floor traffic cop. Marie
Tippit should be properly questioned about Carl Mather without any interference
by anybody, but that apparently is not going to happen.

Brenda
Brody introduced Peter Kornbluh, the director of the NSA – the “other” NSA –
the National Security Archive, who has frequently and successfully sued the
government for the release of sensitive information, especially about the Bay
of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the coup in Chile and other Deep Political
events. [The National Security Archive]

As also
recounted in his new book (“Back Channel to Cuba – The Hidden History of
Negotiations between Washington and Havana” w/ William M. LeoGrande), Kornblugh
gave an interesting and detailed report on the backchannel negotiations between
JFK and Castro in the months and days leading up to the assassination, without
actually saying they were related to his murder. It was all done through
improvised channels, Kornbluh said, noting that “there is a department of dirty
tricks but no department of peaceful tricks,” and Kennedy certainly preferred
talks and negotiations over violence and war.

While I
didn’t get a chance to ask my question to him while he was on stage, I did
catch up to him just beyond the door and talked to him for a few minutes with a
few others who wanted to follow up on his presentation – Morley, Simpich and
Lesar.

Did the
anti-Castro Cubans learn of the supper-secret backchannel negotiations? That’s
what I want to know.

I
mentioned the fact that Arthur Slesinger told Anthony Summers that if the
anti-Castro Cubans did learn about the secret talks that would have certainly
given them motivation to kill Kennedy, if they needed any more after the Bay of
Pigs, but Kornblouh responded that while they might have, he didn’t come across
any indication that the anti-Castro Cubans learned about the talks.

Before
the others got to him, I asked Kornblouh another quick question – did he think
the death of the key intermediary - network TV reporter Lisa Howard suspicious?
Kornblough described Howard as “the Barbara Walters of her day,” and described
her role in detail, but he did not think her drug overdose death suspicious.

“No,”
Kornblouh said, “I looked at that very closely and she was depressed and got a
prescription for 20 pills and added a zero and got 200 and bought a soda and
went and killed herself.”

I
thought this suspicious, not only because of the similar deaths of Marilyn
Monroe and Dorothy Kilgallon, but because from what I had learned, she died on
a Sunday when the drug store was closed and so had to get the pharmacist to
open up just to serve her. And then he sells her a Coke and lets her kill
herself in his parking lot? Anyway, call me a conspiracy theorist, but I’m not convinced
that the death of Lisa Howard isn’t suspicious.

In the
meantime, down in the Breakout Room, Patrick Speer (DVD “The Mysterious Death
of Number 35”) did his talk on “The Single-Bullet Theory, Voodoo Science,
and Zombie Lies” that Marie Fonzi later spoke highly of. I also agree with
Pat’s assessment of the conference at the Ed Forum [Ed Forum Link]

The
Breakout Room should have been on the same floor as the main conference room so
people could easily move back and forth, but for the most part, the conference
ran smoothly and was a major success.

For the
first time I met the prolific writer Lamar Waldron ("Withheld in
Full," “Legacy of Secrecy” with Thom Hartman, “Ultimate Sacrifice: John
and Robert Kennedy and the Murder of JFK” who gave me a copy of his book “Watergate:
The Hidden History / Nixon, The Mafia, and the CIA.” We had an intense
but short conversation on some esoteric details of the JFK case – he gave me a
new name – Frank Ippolito, and we joined the mutual admiration society, as I
think Waldron’s primary theory holds water and is basically what happened. That
is - a CIA plot to kill Castro was hijacked and redirected to kill JFK at
Dealey Plaza, and this is what John Newman is coming to understand when he
finds a “plot within a plot.”

While
the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro get all the attention, I think the Valkyrie
plot as described to the Joint Chiefs of Staff by Desmond FitzGerald on
September 24, 1963 [See: Higgins Memo] is the specific plan that was redirected
to JFK at Dealey Plaza, and not one of the earlier Mafia plans. While the Mob
has used snipers as hit men, as they did with Bugsy Siegel, they don’t do
disinformation and black propaganda, a key ingredient in the Dealey Plaza
operation.

Waldron’s
talk “Withheld in Full” also reflects on the extreme number of significant
records still being with held for reasons of national security and as detailed
in his book “Legacy of Secrecy.”

Relegated
to the Breakout Room, Gaeton Fonzi’s widow Marie Fonzi (“The Last
Investigation” by the late Gaeton Fonzi with introduction by Marie Fonzi) did
a talk called “On the Home Front,” and later gave me a typed transcript of a
statement Fonzi recorded for his Third
Decade conference speech that was played at the Wectht symposium:

“In
1976, more than a decade after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy –
and long after a majority of Americans had decided they didn’t believe the
Warren Report – the United States Congress announced it was going to conduct a
[quote] ‘full and complete investigation.’ - Congress lied. Congress said that
its new investigation would be more impartial than the Warren Commission’s,
would examine with unbiased finality every piece of evidence, and would explore
the possible involvement of every individual or group with the means and
motivation to kill the President. Congress lied. Congress said that its probe
would debunk all the wild theories and crazy speculation that had sprouted over
the years and that it would confront all the unanswered questions surrounding
the mystery of the assassination. Congress lied. And the leaders of Congress’s
new investigation said that it would definitely be the last investigation.
That, finally was the truth. I believe there will never be another official
government investigation of President Kennedy’s assassination.”

Marie
should be credited in large part for convincing Antonio Veciana to come out and
make a rare public appearance and said, “Gaeton wasn’t very pushy, I’m more
pushy than he was,” and she helped get some things done that might not have
otherwise. [I will be writing another separate sidebar on Veciana-Fonzi and
will post it soon.]

In the
main room Dr. Donald Thomas (“Hear No Evil”) gave his talk on the
acoustical evidence from the Dallas Police dictabelt tape, and is in his element here. While he was a little
off base trying to figure out the Tippit murder, he is on more firm ground with
“JFK Acoustical Evidence: Challenge and Corroboration,” which reviews the
efforts to determine how many shots are captured on the Dallas PD dictabelt
tape.

While I
was in the Breakout Room giving an Update on the Air Force One radio
transmission tapes, [See: Links], Temple University professor Joan Mellen (“A
Farewell To Justice” and “The Great Game in Cuba”) was in the center ring giving
a much talked about presentation on the “CIA and the HSCA: How CIA
Controlled the HSCA and the Writing of its Final Report.”

I call
Joan Mellen the “Unsinkable Molly Brown” of JFK researchers because of her
flamboyant manner and style, and unceasing critique of others and their
theories, she has a pin to pinch everybody, but then, behind your back, she
will say something nice about you, even if she doesn’t agree with you.

People
at my talk were getting tweets on the fireworks at Mellen’s talk upstairs, and
I look forward to seeing the video of what she had to say. She later told me
she was unhappy not being able to make her case the day before, when the HSCA
investigators Lopez and Hardway were on, as what she had to say complimented
what they were talking about.

Professor
David Kaiser (“The Road to Dallas” 2008) updated his book with a talk on “What
We’ve Learned Since The Road to Dallas,” and while he believes Oswald was
the shooter who killed JFK, his belief that the conspiracy was based in a Mafia
related plot has been expanded somewhat, and he seems open to persuasion that
other factors contributed to the conspiracy.

Meanwhile,
in the Breakout Room, a disenchanted Jim DiEugenio (“Reclaiming Parkland” / “Destiny
Betrayed”) would have preferred to be under the Big Top upstairs, rather
than a sideshow in the Breakout Room, but he gave a very persuasive
presentation on JFK’s foreign policies: “Who Was John F. Kennedy, and Why Was
He Murdered?” Jim reportedly was later
given time to talk under the Big Top.

William
Paris, my ride to DC, brought along his father, a retired US Army Colonel, who
served during the Kennedy administration and he said he was especially
impressed with DiEugenio’s talk, and learned some things that he didn’t know
when they were actually going down.

SCIENCE
AND COVER-UP: NO MORE LONE ASSASSIN

Cyril
Wecht, who also spoke at the other conference on the other side of town,
regaled us once again in his talk “Two Autopsies. Two Cover-ups – JFK, RFK,”
and explained how relevant the proper RFK autopsy is in trying to understand
the botched autopsy of JFK.

Also on
hand was Cyril’s son Ben, an administrator at the Cyril Wecht Center for
Forensic Science and Law at Duquese University in Pittsburgh, and organizer of
the October conference. I have suggested to Ben that he consider holding a
special symposium focused on the topic of the increasing use of acoustical
evidence in high profile cases such as JFK, RFK, Kent State, Trevor Martin,
etc., and he said he is seriously considering it.

After so
many years Dr. Wecht can give his talk in his sleep, as can Gary Aguliar, whose
talk was on “Junk Science and the Death of JFK – What We Now Know that We
Didn’t Know Then.”

Eric
Hamburg (“JFK, Nixon, Oliver Stone & Me” / "Bond of Secrecy" by
St. John Hunt) was supposed to give his talk on “Conversations with
Fabian Escalante and E. Howard Hunt — Two views of the Kennedy assassination,”
but I didn’t catch it and couldn’t find him in the revised program.

I
attended the Breakout Room report on “The Raleigh Call and the Fingerprints of
Intelligence” by Dr. Grover P. Proctor Jr. Dr. Proctor gave a clear and concise
report on the evidence and witness reports on the phone call Oswald tried to
make while incarcerated in the Dallas jail, a call that could have led to a
former US Army counter-intelligence officer who was living in North Carolina.
Without speculating or embracing any conspiracy theory, Dr. Proctor just laid
out the facts and allowed for you to make up your own mind, and he promised to
keep everyone updated on any future developments at his web site.

On the
other hand, there was more speculation in Dr. Randolph Robertson’s talk “The
JFK Assassination – 5 shots + 3 shooters + 3 sniper’s nests = CONSPIRACY.”
Robertson, a AARC board member, made a study synchronizing the acoustical
evidence with the Zapruder film and concluding there were five shots from three
different directions. “There is no longer a debate over the fact that there was
a conspiracy, only a debate over how many shooters fired from how many
locations.”

Dr.
Robertson then joined Dr. David Mantik in a discussion of the “Harper
fragment,” a chunk of JFK’s scull that was found in Dealey Plaza and not seen
by either the Parkland or Bethesda doctors. Dr. Mantik later gave a Breakout Room
session on “JFK autopsy X-rays, photographs and medical evidence,” and when I
sat with him at dinner that night, he expressed interest in the Valkyrie plot
as it relates to Dealey Plaza, so I sent him the relevant links. [JFKcountercoup: Valkyrie At Dealey Plaza - Updated ]

Professor G. Robert Blakey Photo Brent Lyons

In the
early afternoon session miss titled THE CUBNS, THE CIA, AND THE COVERUP Prof.
G. Robert Blakey, who had missed his scheduled session the day before, made it
in time to talk on “The Culture of Secrecy and Democratic Accountability,”
which touched heavily on his role as the second chief counsel to the HSCA.

After
his talk I sat down with Blakey and told him how I had obtained Jim Braden’s
Camden NJ arrest report and gave it to him when he requested it while writing
his book on the mob. I also told him how I had given a copy of that report to
Richard Sprague, who didn’t turn his records over to the HSCA when he was
fired, but kept them and took them back to his Philadelphia law office, where
they reside today.

This is
the case even after I told the ARRB in my public testimony that Sprague had his
HSCA papers, but they never obtained them, and the NARA are only just now
getting around to asking Sprague for his HSCA files that according to the law
should be included in the JFK Collection and open to the public. Blakey just shrugged.

David
Kaiser (“Road to Dallas” 2008) followed Blakey and gave his talk on “What We’ve
Learned Since The Road to Dallas,” while in the Breakout Room Lisa Pease talked
about her special interest, “James Jesus Angleton and the Warren Commission,” and
detailed there interesting relationship.

THE
MEDIA AND THE JFK ASSASSINATION

A panel
discussion on “Why Won’t the Media Cover the Story?” pretty much repeated what
has been said before, over and over again, at almost every previous conference,
including the Wecht Conference, where there were two panels on the subject.
Afterwards, Jeff Morely said it would be last panel on the media and JFK that
he would participate in, and I agree, it has all been said before and there’s
nothing new here under the sun.

At some
point in the proceedings, during a panel
discussion, David Talbot called in to talk and answer some questions about his
current research on Allen Dulles, the former CIA director and Warren
Commissioner - “the chairman of the board,” who Talbott said, had connections
“everywhere,” never considered himself retired and continued to connect with
operational people in the CIA long after he was fired.

Dulles,
said Talbot, was not motivated by money, but power, and we look forward to his
upcoming book “The Devil’s Chessboard,” which will be published in 2015.

Andrew
Kreig (“Presidential Puppetry: Obama, Romney and Their Masters”), who assisted
Policoff in the preparation for the conference, did a talk on “The JFK
Cover-up’s Long Shadow.”

Walt
Brown (“The Warren Omission” and JFK Master Chronology) was supposed to give a
talk on “The Dulles Commission – the 50th Anniversary,” but since he was
relegated to the Breakout Room, he decided to pass and didn’t bother to show up
at all. He apparently does have a scheduled appearance at the Mob Museum in Las
Vegas on November 22, 2014, which should be interesting.

Russ
Baker (“Family of Secrets”) was very convincing in his talk on “The Role of the
WC Staff in the Cover-Up,” which has direct implications on the recent
discovery of new Warren Commission documents among the personal papers of a
former WC attorney, documents that apparently are not part of the JFK
Collection at the National Archives.

It
wouldn’t have been a conference without Robert Groden (“The Search for Lee
Harvey Oswald” / “The Killing of the President” / “Absolute Proof”) who did his
talk on “A View From the Grassy Knoll,”
a view that he now knows intimately from being there a few days every
week. Robert’s new book “Absolute Proof” is one of the best of the new books,
over 1,000 photos, every one clear and glossy, and with explanatory captions
that make it worthwhile, and not overpriced at $75.

Robert Groden Photo Brent Lyons

I asked
Bob about a new reference in his book and he explained that he had interviewed
a former TSBD secretary Geneva Reid, who told him that she was with Oswald
handing him change when the shots rang out. Reid had requested this not be
published until after she died, and she has since passed away, so Bob included
this new story in his latest book.

Meanwhile,
back on the main stage, a most interesting dialog was acted out on stage by
eight professional actors – a dramatization of the remarks of Warren
Commissioners at a special, secret meeting at which they discussed the rumor
that Lee Harvey Oswald was an undercover FBI agent, a unique and effective way
of understanding the issues that were brought up at that important meeting. The
audio recording of this reading should make a good radio program.

Stone
came on a video remote to talk briefly and to say hello to many of his friends
who were there, and Stone’s primary researcher for the JFK movie, Jane Rosconi,
gave a brief talk, but Kuznic said it best when he mentioned that we must get
this information out to the schools and to young people in order to get a new
generation interested in these subjects and pursing this research into the
future.

At the
banquet I sat with Joan Mellen, Malcolm Blunt, two young professionals from
Cleveland, Mike Nurko and a gentleman from Belgium - Flip De Mey, who gave us
each a copy of his new book “Cold Case Kennedy,” which takes the proper
forensic investigative approach to the assassination – the only way that works.